Perhaps one of the more neglected aspects of Halloween is that it is followed by All Saints Day or Hallow Day. It was originally a shortened version of All Hallow Even. All Saints Day, in turn, was a Christianized form of the Celtic New Year. It seems almost a shame that the Celtic artwork is no longer associated with the festivities.

Monday, October 29, 2012

In September 2012
Karen L. King announced a scrap of papyrus that she called “The Gospel of
Jesus’s Wife” at the International Congress of Coptic Studies. Professor King
argued for the authenticity of the fragment and the work contained therein. In
one of the news report, Stephen Emmel expressed uneasiness with the fragment’s
authenticity. Others have since expressed various reasons for doubting the authenticity. I will not repeat that discussion here but will give some of my own reasons. This will be a more technical discussion, so if you are not interested skip to the last paragraph.Paleography

Although it is not certain because all I have seen is low
resolution photographs, the document looks like it is written with a brush
rather than a pen (kalamos). The brush fell out of use by the end of the second
century B.C. The writing instrument would be anachronistic.

My colleague, Thomas Wayment pointed out to me that the
writing is columnar, with each letter taking approximately the same amount of
width. This is very unusual in a trained scribe, and even unusual in an
untrained scribe.

Wayment also notes that there are five different types of
episilon in the document. Normally a scribe will have only one or two forms of
a letter.

The djandje at the end of the second line is improperly
formed, with rounded corners rather than the marked points typical of Coptic
scribes.

Now, lets take a look at the problems in the Coptic, line by
line.

Line 1

Odd Syntax

The syntax of this sentence is possible but very rare. The
syntax is:

nominal subject + conjugation prefix + subject pronoun +
verb

Normally, one would expect one of two types of sentence
depending on whether it was a sentence written in Coptic by a native speaker or
a sentence translated into Coptic. The native speaker normally writes the
following syntax:

conjugation prefix + nominal subject + verb

The translator normally uses the following syntax:

conjugation prefix + subject pronoun + verb + ⲛϭⲓ + nominal subject.

This sentence is neither. If this is a document translated
into Coptic from Greek, it is not following the typical syntax for such a
sentence.

Lack of a direct object marker

There should be a marker of the direct object before the
word ⲡⲱⲛϩ.
It should read ⲙⲡⲱⲛϩ. This is bad
Coptic. It could also possibly be a scribal error.

Line 3

Impossible sentence endings

The third line of the fragment has a sentence ending in ⲁⲣⲛⲁ. This is not just
unusual but unique. The normal use of ⲁⲣⲛⲁ is as follows:

The verb ⲁⲣⲛⲁ
may take a direct object marked by the
direct object marker ⲛ-/ⲙⲙⲟ⸗.

The verb ⲁⲣⲛⲁ
may be followed by a quotation proceeded by the marker ϫⲉ.

The verb ⲁⲣⲛⲁ
may be followed by a verb of speaking in the circumstantial followed by the
quotation.

No other use of the verb ⲁⲣⲛⲁ
is attested. In Sahidic, and in Coptic in general, the verb ⲁⲣⲛⲁ
simply cannot end a sentence.

Furthermore, there are only four words
in Coptic that have the letter combination ⲁⲣⲛⲁ:
They are ⲁⲣⲛⲁ, ⲁⲡⲁⲣⲛⲁ,
ⲃⲁⲣⲛⲁⲃⲁⲥ,
and ⲕⲁⲫⲁⲣⲛⲁⲟⲩⲙ.
The syntax of ⲁⲡⲁⲣⲛⲁ
is like the syntax of ⲁⲣⲛⲁ, so even if it were ⲁⲡⲁⲣⲛⲁ
it would have the same problems.

Line 4

Missing quotation particle

The verb of speaking ⲡⲉϫⲉ
normally starts a quote with ϫⲉ.
Again, this could be a scribal error but it would be a rather careless scribe.

Wrong word

By Coptic times, the word ϩⲓⲙⲉ
wife has dropped out as a separate lexical entry. It is used as the plural of
the word ⲥϩⲓⲙⲉ but usually has the
form ϩⲓⲟⲙⲉ. So, either the scribe
mismatched the singular definite article with the plural form of the word, or
dropped an important letter from the singular form. I suppose we should be
calling the document the Gospel of Jesus’s Wives.

Others have pointed to other problems and I will not repeat
them here.

Conclusions

While a text may have a number of unusual features, when the
unusual features are particularly dense, an explanation ought to be required.
An eight line papyrus without a single complete sentence might present some
oddities, but how many unusual features should we expect to find? Normally, one
expects one or two scribal errors per page. There are more Coptic errors in
this eight line fragment than we would expect to find on a page. These errors
yield not just bad Coptic but impossible Coptic. There are also anomalies in
the writing of the document. The document was written by someone who did not
understand Coptic, was not used to writing Coptic, and using an anachronistic
instrument, in other words, by a modern forger.

Sunday, October 28, 2012

As I start blogging, I do
so with some trepidation. Normally blogs have some sort of comment feature. The
purpose behind such a feature is to have readers leave behind thoughtful comments.
In reality, however, comments on most blogs that I have read are ignorant,
hate-filled, and incoherent diatribes.

I am not the only one to notice the problem. Arthur Brooks
in his book, Gross National Happiness,
asks why ideologues are happy: “The most plausible reason is religion—not real religion, but rather, a secular
substitute in which they believe with perfect certainty in the correctness of
their political dogmas. . . . True political believers are martyrs after a
fashion, willing to shout slogans in public for causes they are sure are good,
or against causes they are convinced are evil. They are happy because—unlike
you, probably—they are positive they
are right.”[1]
Brooks notes that true political believers tend to consider themselves happy but they delight in making those around them
unhappy. “The unhappiness created by happy people with extreme political views
extends far beyond those stuck behind them in traffic and exposed to their
bumper stickers. There is evidence that people with extreme views affect
everybody adversely, because they are less compassionate than average, less
honest, and less concerned for others.”[2]
They want to stir like-minded people to action. “In the extremist’s mind, it’s good if you get angry.”[3]
But is it?

The Book of Mormon, as usual, has some interesting
commentary on the subject. The letter of Mormon to his son Moroni preserved in
Moroni 9 contains some of the most depressing passages in scripture:
descriptions of the barbarous practices of the Nephites who “only a few years”
previously had been “a civil and a delightsome people” (Moroni 9:12). One cause
of the depravity was that “Satan stirreth them up continually to anger one with
another” (Moroni 9:3). This is one reason why I am not overly enthusiastic
about comments.

The title for this blog comes from the Vǫluspá in the Elder Edda. The forn spǫll fira means the ancient story of men in Old Norse.

The purpose of this blog is to deal with ancient stories. Most of them will probably not be about Vikings. Often there will be a modern connection but I will usually not make the connection explicit. "He who hath ears to hear, let him hear."

Ideally I hope to post something about once a week.

Someday, I hope to figure out how to fix the fonts so that they will display the necessary strange characters properly.